« If one key political question lies in the capacity of societies to reciprocate resources, proposing a place for sharing ideas, solidarities, or a meal establishes a fundamental condition for any social tie. It is not by chance that uncountable artists throughout the twentieth century have proposed settings for sharing. What can it mean for cultural institutions and practitioners to enact hospitality? How can the unequal resources in the art-world be redistributed in the frame of our everyday practices? »

— Lotte Arndt

For this study day, we will engage in direct discussions and exchanges: rather than inviting a small number of speakers to expose and discuss their ideas with the public, we aim at gathering a diverse assembly, hoping to encourage interventions based on different practices and experiences. The contributors are all connected to the “Tomorrow Is An Island” exhibition and partly work at inventing new rare and necessary forms of welcoming in contexts that stretch from Calais camp to Villa Vassilieff, or question economic conditions and the gendered relations within the structures we work in.

Artists Thelma Cappello and Rafael Moreno will offer a diner at the end of the discussion.

This event is organized in the framework of the Goethe-Institut Fellowship 2016, a grant program for German curators created together with the Goethe-Institut and Villa Vassilieff. For its first edition, the grant is attributed to Lotte Arndt, curator, theorist, writer and professor in Köln, in conversation with the Temporary Gallery (Köln, Germany) for her project “If we would inhabit a threshold”.